Away from TV cameras, Chet Curtis was an easy friend

The former WCVB news anchor’s Quincy friends say he was caring and personable. Former colleagues say he was a consummate professional. Curtis died Jan. 22 after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Lane Lambert The Patriot Ledger @llambert_ledger

Leo Keka isn’t quite sure how he got to know Chet Curtis so well so soon. Curtis, the former WCVB-TV news anchor and longtime Marina Bay resident, first visited Keka’s restaurant, Alba, soon after it opened in 2002, “and we hit it off,” Keka said. “It was like he was part of the family.”That’s how Keka is remembering Curtis, who died Wednesday night at 74, after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer.

And Keka isn’t alone.

For Kristie Henriksen, the owner of Siro’s restaurant at Marina Bay, Curtis was the always-personable dinner guest who often sat down at the restaurant’s piano to sing and play as other patrons danced and sang along.

As friends in Curtis’ adopted hometown of Quincy, Henriksen and Keka saw the Chet Curtis that few others did. For most New Englanders, Curtis will always be known as the former Channel 5 evening news co-anchor with his then-wife, Natalie Jacobson.

Affectionately called “Chet and Nat” by their audience, they were an on-air team for more than two decades, from the 1970s through the ’90s. Curtis had moved on to New England Cable News by the time Keka and Henriksen got to know him.

But former fellow journalists from Channel 5 and NECN say Curtis was much the same person through all the ups and downs of his career, including his years as a Boston media celebrity with Jacobson, his fractious departure from Channel 5, and a second stint as news anchor at NECN.

“He was an exemplar of the finest in TV journalism,” said David Ropeik, who was on the Channel 5 news team in the 1970s and ’80s. “He was a man of the highest decency and human values, and that informed his journalism.”

“For Chet, it was about the journalism, not being on TV,” Ropeik said.

“He was such an amazingly nice man,” said Margie Reedy, who co-anchored a NECN interview show with Curtis. In a business filled with outsized egos and intense ambition, “he was ready to jump into anything,” she said.

“I appreciated the way he made that transition from a very big stage (at Channel 5),” Reedy said.

Born Chester Kukiewicz in 1939, Curtis grew up in Amsterdam, N.Y., a mainly Polish and Jewish town near Schenectady. He started his broadcast career as an Ithaca College student, hosting an hour-long talk show on the campus radio station.

He took his first TV job in Washington, D.C., then reported for a CBS station in New York City before the original Channel 5 hired him in 1968. He and Jacobson joined the station’s second incarnation as WCVB in 1972.

As Channel 5 rose in the ratings, he and Jacobson became known as “ChetandNat,” the attractive, personable couple who delivered the news and covered such major events as visits by future South African President Nelson Mandela and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

But Ropeik said Curtis pursued his high-profile role as a seasoned journalist, not a media celebrity.

“There couldn’t have been anyone so well-known in a community who was so non-egotistical and not self-absorbed,” Ropeik said.

Curtis and Jacobson married in 1975. The arrival of their first daughter in 1981 was like family news for their viewers – as was their on-air announcement of their separation in 1999. Curtis moved from co-anchoring with Jacobson to reporting and Sunday anchoring. In 2000 he left WCVB to join other former Channel 5 reporters and managers at New England Cable News.

Curtis never said much about his Channel 5 departure. In a 2001 Patriot Ledger interview, he said he and Jacobson had no problem working together after their separation, “but management did.”

In that same interview he said NECN was “like Channel 5 in its former best life.” Early on, he co-hosted a live interview segment with Reedy. Such pairings don’t always work easily, but Reedy said Curtis was “calm and smooth” from day one – the consummate professional.

Curtis moved into a Marina Bay condo around the same time, and soon became a regular at Siro’s. Henriksen said Curtis’ informal piano gigs began one night when he sat down unannounced, and began singing and playing standards and Polish favorites.

“He had a good voice,” she said.

At Alba, he ordered a Polish-style smoked pork and cabbage soup entrée every time Keka put it on the menu. Over the years, Curtis served as auctioneer for charity fundraisers Keka hosted. He attended the first communions for Keka’s daughter and son.

After Keka’s mother died, Curtis took Keka on a day-trip visit to Curtis’ hometown of Amsterdam, N.Y., “to see where he came from.”

He drove Keka to his childhood home, to the church where he sang as a boy, past the factory where his father worked, and then to his parents’ graves.

“He was a guy you wanted to get to know,” Keka said.

Lane Lambert may be reached at llambert@ledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @LLambert_Ledger.

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